New Jersey teen falls to his death at Kaaterskill Falls in Greene County

HAINES FALLS >> A 17-year-old from New Jersey who was hiking with friends and relatives fell to his death early Wednesday at Kaaterskill Falls in Greene County, according to state police.

Ezra Kennedy of Westfield, N.J., was hiking about 8:50 a.m. with two friends and two cousins when he and two others left the group and hiked to the top of the lower falls, police said. Kennedy lost his footing as he approached the edge of the falls and fell between 50 and 60 feet to the rocks below, said Senior Investigator Peter Kusminsky.

Kennedy was wearing sneakers, not “hiking footwear,” Kusminsky said.

The investigator said Kennedy was pronounced dead near the base of the lower falls and that his body was recovered by members of the Twin Clove Rope Rescue Team, which includes rescue squads from Greene and Ulster counties.

An autopsy was to be performed Thursday.

Kusminsky said the group Kennedy was in was made up of two males and three females, all ranging in age from 16 to 20. They had traveled to the falls, which are in the town of Hunter, from New Jersey early Wednesday morning, he said.

Two women from Dutchess County fell to their deaths at the falls in the summer of 2014, leading to the installation of protective fences at the top of the upper falls.

Public access to Kaaterskill Falls then was restricted last summer while the state Department of Environmental Conservation made $450,000 in improvements to enhance safety and upgrade trails. Kusminsky said the improvements were to the upper falls, not to the area where Kennedy fell.

The changes to the upper falls include a new trail with a 200-step stone staircase.

Kaaterskill Falls is a two-drop, 260-foot cascade. It’s one of America’s oldest tourist attractions and is immortalized in Hudson River School paintings and Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.”

Diane Pineiro-Zucker has been a reporter at the Daily Freeman since April 2013. Pineiro-Zucker worked as a reporter in the Freeman’s Rhinebeck bureau in the early 1980s, left to become executive editor at Taconic Newspapers in Dutchess County.